In the wake of the those milestones came the usual suspects of a media frenzy. We’ve had attacks. Matt Bai said Twitter “may be the worst thing to happen to politics and its attending media since a couple of geniuses at CNN dreamed up ‘Crossfire’ back in the 1980s.” Maureen Dowd asked Twitter founder Biz Stone, “Why did you think the answer to e-mail was a new kind of e-mail?”).

Now comes the crushing news: “Oprah Already Bored With Twitter”. Or so Silicon Alley Insider declared yesterday afternoon, stating that, as of approximately 5:20 PM EST, Oprah has not tweeted in almost four whole days.

As it turns out, millions more may be tiring of their shiny new toy. Yesterday the media ratings company Neilson reported that despite exponential growth in new users, Twitter has the problem of “making sure these flocks of new users are enticed to return to the nest.”

Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent.

When MySpace and Facebook were at the stage that Twitter is at today, their retention rates were, according to Nielsen, twice as high – and they’ve now stabilized at nearly 70 percent. Twitter’s high rate of churn will, if it continues, hamstring the service’s growth, says Nielsen’s David Martin: “A retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site’s growth to about a 10 percent reach figure … There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point. [Twitter] will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty.”

“The half-life of a microblog,” he adds, “is even briefer than the half-life of a blog.”

At Media Memo, Peter Kafka says that while there may be some issues with Nielsen’s data, the retention number “makes sense on a gut level to me.”

Twitter is easy to use, but it often takes a while to make sense, and if you’re not a professional self-promoter–or someone with a lot of friends who are already on Twitter–it may never make sense.

Kafka goes on to note that “a service that appeals to no more than 10 percent of the Internet audience” is not such a bad thing. But . . .

But a lot of the Twitter sales pitch–to investors and would-be partners like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT)–is contingent on the service’s eventual ubiquity. The appeal of Twitter’s real-time search capabilities, for instance, is less seductive if you’re only searching what a sliver of Internet users are Tweeting about. And knowing that growth is capped could make that impressive hockey stick chart a little less so.

At We Are Organized Chaos, Jack Benoff says “Twitter doesn’t need to continue it’s meteoric growth to be a sizable community and create value for (some) brands/businesses.” Still, “if I worked at Twitter, improving those retention rates (and a revenue stream) would be my focus.”

Benoff’s to-do list includes:

* Do a better job of educating the average consumer on the “why’s” and the “how’s” of Twitter. Currently, too much responsibility for figuring out why and how one should use Twitter is placed on the consumer. . . .

* Create more intuitive tools to help people find people. Twitter is a community site. Help people create their communities. Create tools that will make it easier for people to connect and find value. As Facebook is showing us, once people begin to find that value, they’ll stick around. . . .

* Create clear, concise, and consumer friendly messaging, and once that’s done, stick to it and make sure your spokespeople are always on message. Right now Twitter’s messaging is all over the place, and has subsequently created confusion in the marketplace. . . .

Say Ashton Kutcher . . . decides to cut a deal with a major studio to head a new twitter-like network. Could happen. They’ll get their network built, quietly, then start leaking it with teases on billboards of course, but also (you guessed it) on Twitter. When Oprah sees him do his network, she’ll want one. And so will Larry King and Shaq, and all the celebs who have yet to make a splash on Twitter. Brad Pitt and Ed Norton will call theirs The Fight Club. George Clooney’s will be Oceans Million. Prince will hang out in Paisley Park. And you think Apple won’t have one? It might have a 140-char limit, but it won’t just be text.

Twitter is such a productivity killer and a time waster that it should be shut down. When I signed up on Twitter, I was unknowingly ‘following’ a guy who would post tweets like, “I am going to beg my wife to have sex with me.” Do we really need to know that? It serves no purpose and will die a natural death. I hope.

People overrate Twitter for predictable reasons: it’s exactly halfway between edgy and accessible in Internet terms, it doesn’t take much explanation, and can be a convenient shorthand for net savvy to people who aren’t.

I think media figures just think it’s cool to include the word “Twitter” in their headlines. It’s like they think it makes them “chic” or up-to-date or something. It’s truly nauseating and I’m getting sick of it.

I joined Twitter with great skepticism. Since then, I have found it has one great use: sending out blasts (I’m sorry, I cannot bring myself to seriously call them “tweets”) letting my friends know where I’ll be gigging on any given night.

For that, it is an extremely handy tool.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much useless to me.

Like so many things on the Interwebs, maybe it’s not so much that Twitter is inherently stupid or ridiculous, but that it’s just monumentally overhyped, and its actual usefulness is much narrower than it’s been made out to be. That’s probably why the retention rate is low…

Oh, hush, haters. It’s fun and you just might learn a thing or two, you just need to relax and not be so uptight about everything you read being Deep and Meaningful and Worth Your Precious Time.

Sometimes I really want to tell the world that I just read an amazing article in New Scientist, or that I just figured out how to make yogurt, or that I’m going to be in Philadelphia for the weekend and need a bar recommendation… and Twitter is a lot more efficient (and more socially acceptable) than walking down the street yelling at passersby.

Oh, and keep the flexibility! Don’t make me tell you my favorite boy band or my life story. All I want to say is, check it out, you guys, I just saw a great movie/a muskrat/an Elvis impersonator in line at Starbucks/a lightning strike just down the river/a luscious lilac bush bending over the bridle path in Frick Park. By the same token, I want to hear what you heard, see what you saw, laugh if you quip.

I’m young, in my early twenties, for the record. Maybe that’s the disconnect I’m feeling with the rest of the commenters?

One of the things I like best about Twitter is that I can control who I interact with and block folks who are obnoxious or use foul language. It was particularly helpful in spreading information about the Tea Party movement and sharing newstories which the mainstream media does not care to follow…like the Obama administration’s ridiculous AF1 photo op tour…

I agree with Andrew (#8). Twitter gets far too much press for such a relatively useless service, and my guess is that it’s motivated by editors who want to target younger demographics:

“I’ve been hearing about this Twitter thing. We’ve got to cover that- apparently the kids are all over it. Get me 400 words on it by Tuesday. We really need to target that 12-24 demo.”

However, I must say I love Twitter’s business model, though- get tons of venture capital, give lip service to investors about profit potential, then keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing until the millions run out.

@Clare: No, it’s not that everybody hates Twitter because they’re older than you. I’m late 20s, and I find it ridiculous.

Twitter merely repackages technologies that already exist (email, texting, and blogging) into something more inefficient. You could send me a link to that article via email, you can tell me you saw an Elvis impersonator via text, and post the lilac picture on your Flickr or blog.

@C.Larity Yes you could email or text Clair. If she were the only person you wanted to communicate with. The benefit of Twitter is that you can communicate it to multiple people, in non-synchronous time, with the added upshot that it’s optional for them. If I emailed all my friends every time I found an interesting article or texted them all every time I saw something funny, they would probably get irritated with me for spamming their inboxes. With Twitter they can choose to check it out. It doesn’t burden them.

I also have to admit to being fairly amused by the number of people who spend inordinate amounts of time on writing articles/treatises/theses or making animations or podcasts or what have you about how Twitter is a monumental waste of time. I can’t be the only one who finds that delightfully ironic.

Personally, I’m on Twitter. I am not illiterate, ADHD, or a raging narcissist. I have never once made a post about what I’m eating. I don’t follow people who post about what their eating. I do follow someone who is writing a series of short stories 140 characters at a time and number of people who put that whole “brevity is the soul of wit” axiom into practice. But I know it’s not for everyone. I don’t waste my time trying to convince people who don’t like it that they’re wasting their lives by avoiding it and I don’t see why they feel the need to try to convince me of the reverse.

A lot of blogs and websites say “Follow me on Twitter.” Well, duh, aren’t I already following you HERE? Unless I have no life and want to know what time you brushed your teeth, your blog should be enough. It’s just another meaningless code word to show you’re with it. And the names “Twitter” and “Tweet”…please, give me a break.

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The Thread is an in-depth look at how the major news events and controversies of the day are being viewed and debated across the online spectrum. Compiled by Peter Catapano, an editor in The Times’s Opinion section, the Thread is published every Saturday in response to breaking news.